Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/25

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place of the winding way, they spoil it for the nature lover. This is because they straighten all its crooks, go round its steepest climbs, and despoil much of the adjacent landscape in so doing. There is no great gain in this old world that is wholly without loss. So all the improvements which man seeks to perpetrate on nature take away something from her primitive beauty. Of course we all appreciate the telephone and the telegraph, but a telephone pole always looks out of place along a country road.

So to-day for your winding way, you will have to go back away from the beaten tracks to the less cultivated or civilized country, country that is too poor or too out of the way for the invasions of civilization. There you will still find many a cow path and old wood road, twisting and winding on its devious way. It will not matter much what season of the year you go, there will always be something interesting.

If it is springtime the arbutus will arrest you with its fragrance even before you find its vine deep hidden in the grass and dead leaves.